To the tawdry extravagant waste of this:
And amazingly that's only a fraction of the liveries that currently run in Britain.
But then I decided it would be dull for me to write it all over again, and even duller for you to read it, so here is a trio of images which I think make the same point:
Rail Blue and Pearl Grey were the key colours of British Rail's striking new 1965 livery, with a splash of safety yellow. Some people hated these colours: I thought they were immensely elegant and modern.
Although some people hated the "reversed" livery, used on Pullman trains, even more:
But I look at a picture of something like this -- the Class 52, or "Western", possibly the most elegant diesel locomotive ever to run in Britain -- and I can't help but fall in love with this livery all over again:
How lovely was that?
You see: I didn't need all those words, did I?
2 comments:
The collector in me enjoys all the different liveries; seeing them side by side in a major station gives it a vibrancy I love. Some of them are truly horrific though (East Midlands Trains, I'm looking at you).
I'll agree that some of today's privatised liveries are pretty ghastly. But at the same time I always find the blanket blue/grey era of the late 1960s to mid 80s pretty dull. The livery didn't really flatter a lot of the locos to which it was applied, compared to the various multi-tone greens, electric blues and rail blues they originally wore.
Some of the earlier privatised liveries were good (GNER, Anglia, FGE, MML etc.) But today it seems to be a competition to create the most garish eyesore that people WON'T want to be seen in. Taste and subtlety aren't fashionable right now. Shame really.
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